Ad Astra
by Crunch
Summary: David Jacobs is all grown up. . . and he's taking on Manhattan himself.
1. Prologue

Ad Astra- by Crunch  
  
Eek! A chapter fic from Crunch? C'est impossible!  
  
* * * * * * * * * * *  
  
~*~  
  
For what is a man, what has he got?  
  
If not himself, then he has naught.  
  
To say the things he truly feels;  
  
And not the words of one who kneels.  
  
The record shows I took the blows . . .  
  
And did it my way.  
  
~*~  
  
All I ever wanted to do was change the world. To see things as they were before I came and after I came, and know it would've gone differently, it would've been worse, if I'd never come at all. I wanted to make a change. Wouldn't even have to be big, just so long as I could look back and say "You know what? I was there, pal. I was in it." And someone, anyone, would nod their head and say "Yeah, kid, I remember."  
  
See, it's not easy- to be remembered. I mean, how many kids do you think've walked these streets? How many have slept and died on these streets since they were first laid? And how many of them do you know by name?  
  
We don't remember the newsies or the chimney sweeps or the girls who do the washing. We don't remember hardly any of the kids. New York eats its children; I know, I've seen it. People don't think I can see these things, with my schooling and my nice comfy tenement and my pretty family. And it's true, if they aren't on the streets, if they aren't down in the mud, sometimes people stop seeing the whole mess after a while. They don't want to deal with the sloppiness of street life, or street death. They want you to go to school and brush your teeth and comb your hair, and grow up properly. They want you to sit behind a desk and say nothing at all, and when you're ready, when you're good and old and ready, they send you to places where people go quietly and drown in their own bodies like gentlemen.  
  
I've seen kids swallowed by New York. I've seen my friends swallowed whole, and the guy on the corner beside them doesn't even feel the breeze when they go.  
  
But I feel it. I was different. A scholar among the rabble, a light in the rubble, a leader for the masses. Even though I was supposed to be better than it, I was supposed to be above it all, I felt it. That's why I was going to change it all, see?  
  
Because we don't remember the ones that fade away. We remember the gov'ners and the cowboys and the geniuses and the conmen . . . yes, even the conmen. The ones who leave a mark on these streets before they go. All I want to do is leave my mark.  
  
Most people don't think that about me, you know? They see the pale skin and the curly hair, thick and brown as brillo, and the blue eyes that shine even bluer in the nighttime, and they think I'm terribly young and terribly well mannered. One of those polite educated heebies with nothing but pleasing folks and making my way in the world on my mind. They hear me speak, and they know that's what I am. They see the way my shoulders stand like a washboard, and the way my chin sits on invisible stilts, and they think I know better then to get myself muddied up by fighting dirty.  
  
They're wrong. Every one of them.  
  
See, I'm not as quiet or as clean or as green as I look. I know it's tough out there, and you've got to be lucky and you've got to be strong to survive. That's why I study so hard; it's smarts that make you strong, and it's words that make your luck. Words can get you places that fists never could. It's brains that won the war, and it's brains that won the strike.  
  
And, should the need arise, words can get you a few hundred fists behind you, or better yet, in front of you. A leader needs muscle every once in a while- that's something I've learned from Jack.  
  
Jack. . . come to think of it, I bet that's what Jack saw when he ran smack into me that day, a boy in a bowtie and pressed trousers who aimed to please. That's why he didn't turn me away; not then, and not ever. Cause if he could've seen what I came to thinking, and what I came to planning . . . if he could've seen far into the future, I'd be swimming with the fishes in the Brooklyn river right now. I'm not blind, I told you I'm not. I know why Jack's the leader . . . sorry. Was is what I meant.  
  
Don't get me wrong, I never hated Jack. I never meant to hurt him. But sooner or later, you've got to stop following, and you've got to start leading. You've got to take charge of your own life. You've got to leave your mark.  
  
But Jack didn't know that about me. He couldn't see. So I didn't disappear.  
  
His mistake.  
  
Of course, it might've solved an awful lot of problems. Maybe the guys would've been happier, and more of them would've been alive right now. Maybe if I hadn't pulled one over on Manhattan himself, things would have been real, REAL different. Maybe someday they'll see that I've saved them. I saved them, didn't I? Can't you see it in their faces?  
  
Maybe things would've been better if I'd never come at all.  
  
But all I ever wanted to do was change the world. I swear to God that's all . . .  
  
* * * * * * * *  
  
Alright, kiddies, you might be shaking your fists in revulsion and outrage, claiming that David is horribly, appallingly out of character, and I deserve nothing better than for barbaric conspirators to overthrow me. And I'll give you that one. He may well be out of character . . . but believe me, there's a reason he's off. You see, David has evolved. INTRIGUING, you say? Well, even if you don't, bare with me. And review? I'd like to know if I should keep going or quit while I'm not too far behind.  
  
* Title from "Ad Astra per Aspera", which translates as "A rough road leads to the stars" 


	2. The Right Hand Man

Ad Astra- by Crunch  
  
You reviewed! Go figure!  
  
SO:  
  
Thistle: hehe, you know I may take you up on that. Though I doubt he'll ever be loathsome. . . just REALLY misguided. Thanks! And as my first reviewer. . . you get the honor of being my first reviewer. *showers honors upon you* Enjoy!  
  
Skittles: ( I luffle you dahling.  
  
B: I know, B, that's because you've INSPIRED me! I'm a big fan of the Dave- meister, I just hope I do him justice. (btw, luffle you as well, dear!) You think? I really hope he stays in character. . . he's going to make a lot of bad choices, but as long as they're well intentioned, I think he'll be pretty much in line. . . AU? Well, thanks! It is kind of mafia-esque, but hopefully still enjoyable. Thanks! Keep reading! And update something awesome! (not that any of your fics AREN'T awesome)  
  
Gothic: heheh, I luf you and your encouraging excerpts, Gothic. Oy, that IS bad. . . it's writing like that that makes me believe any Shmoe can get published, even me. . . (  
  
Ershey: You think? Thanks! Yeah, he'll definitely be in a different light. . . probably a bizarro world light, but hopefully he'll stay in character. Hah, thanks, I will! And keep Reviewing!!!  
  
Kezzles: Eek, you flatter me FAR too much, dahl, But I luf you and your amazement anyways. Ah, manipulative Davey. . . the possibilities for amusement boggle the mind. *looks over her shoulder to find manipulative!Davey, smoking a pipe as he plots world domination* Tell you what; you update "keeping it safe", like, yesterday, and I'll update this one, kapeesh?  
  
Hope: Eek! I don't know what to do in the face of so much praise. . . you flatter me too much as well, dahl (doesn't mean I don't enjoy it!) hah, thanks for thinking so! I don't think Davey will be saving much of anyone any time soon. . . ooh, thanks for mentioning that! Yeah, I have a tendency to get repetitious and confusing when I write, so thanks for keeping me in line. I need to work on that for future updates. . . keep reviewing and tell me if I'm babbling again??  
  
And now, the impossible made possible, the inconceivable made ceivable: CHAPTER TWO  
  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
  
~*~  
  
For what is a man, what has he got?  
  
If not himself, then he has naught.  
  
To say the things he truly feels;  
  
And not the words of one who kneels.  
  
The record shows I took the blows . . .  
  
And did it my way.  
  
~*~  
  
The Tenement complex on Dyker Street was where Jack and Sarah met to kiss and grope each other.  
  
When I say "tenement complex", I give the old building too much credit. The place looked more like Stonehenge than any decent living quarters, with crumbling bricks, all pale and broken, that rubbed off on your hands like blackboard chalk when you leaned against them; shriveled gray leaves that festered between gaps in the walls; and a rusted chain link fence that kept the tenements in (or would have, had anyone been living there) better than it kept the burglars out, I imagine. The complex was small but towering, a tallish brick oven squatting in a dump yard dressed up as a city street. Trash scuttled across the lawn, a grass plot with barely enough green stubble for a five o'clock shadow, in rolling waves; dusty bottles and crushed cigarette cartons, and ripped potato sacks that had done their jobs as blankets and moved on.  
  
On a pile of these filmy blankets, in the corner of an abandoned room where broken windows glittered blackly like rotten teeth, is the spot where Jack took my sister.  
  
Mama would have been appalled. She would've seen it as a sign that we were falling even further into ruin, and who could blame her? First her husband lost his job and took his place in the breadline, then her son, the scholar of the family, quit his schooling, quit his future, to support her brood. Sure, he'd won a newspaper strike, but that didn't change the fact that her youngest never went to bed with a full stomach, Now her daughter was undressing for a cowboy in the rubble of Dyker Street . . . if Mama had known, it would have been her undoing. So I never told her.  
  
Sometimes, I even kept lookout.  
  
After all, Jack had a borough to run. Because if Spot Conlon was Brooklyn, then Jack Kelly was Manhattan itself. Now, if I told that to Mama or Papa, or any grownup that couldn't spot the kid he'd bought his paper from that morning amid the tidal wave of boys that slept on New York's cobblestones each night . . . if I'd told Pulitzer himself before the strike, they all would have laughed. Imagine, a newsie running the city. But anyone who was down in the mud, any boy who was in it knew just how far Jacks reach went.  
  
Every Manhattan boy who pushed the papes answered to our leader. Harlem and Queens paid a pittance every month to keep their territories as their own (most of it went to Jack's father in the pen, which he later told me), and Spot Conlon, who makes a truce with no man, had an uneasy alliance going with our own Jacky-boy. Why do you think Spot gave him the time of day when we struck on Pulitzer? Do you think he would have done that for Queens? Do you think he would have done that for me? Not likely. Those two had a deal going the whole time; so long as Jack kept his hands out of Brooklyn's regime, Brooklyn would do the same for him. And for the most part, it worked, all of it, and really smoothly too. I helped Jack make sure it worked.  
  
See, Jack kept order with his charm and his fists. His boys loved him, with his hair like shined-up mahogany, and his skin like gingerbread, and his smile. . . I've seen that smile freeze girls in the streets. They loved him, and they had every right to; he was a good leader, after all. But they feared him as well. Just a little bit, for how he'd fought his way to the top. You could catch it in their eyes when they first saw Jack round the street corner. It was just a passing cloud, gone in a flash as admiration took over. But if you were watching closely, you could see it, in Blink, and in Race, and in Skitts, and in all of them.  
  
Me, I worked with my words and my smarts. I climbed the ladder and struck down Goliath, and when the strike was over, I knew my place. I was the right-hand man. Racetrack had some objections at first, but after Jack met with him in private, Race came to Tibby's that night with a broken nose and Jack's reasoning to chew on, and he saw the light.  
  
See, I'm pretty good with my words. They don't call me the Walking Mouth for nothing, do they? But sometimes, like when Jack and Sarah went at it in the complex, I worked with my eyes. And I was playing lookout the day Brooklyn himself came calling.  
  
It was winter, and it was freezing, with a cold that carried on the wind. It worked its way into every fiber of your clothing and blew through your skin like it was rice paper, as it always did in New York. Dyker Street was no exception to the weather; if anything, it was colder on that side of town. Winter or no, someone had to keep watch while Jack was indisposed, so I ended up stationed by the building's side wall.  
  
I leaned my head against the bricks, my bottom on the soggy ground and my knees up to my chin. It wasn't a real dignified position to be in, not for the right hand of Manhattan, but I wasn't in a very dignified state of mind. My best friend was buried in the relative warmth of the complex, getting into the old push and pull with my sister, I was planted in an alleyway, and Spot and his men were halfway down the lane. . . I jumped as I realized that Spot and his men were, in fact, halfway down the lane. Some lookout I was.  
  
My cheeks burning brighter than they had from the cold, I stumbled to my feet in what Race called watchdog position; shoulders back, arms just bent at the elbows and fists balled into clubs, like I was coiled to punch if I had to. Watchdog position makes me look more like muscle than I really am.  
  
"Well if it aint Davey!" Spot tossed a nod my way as he strolled over, scuffing at clumps of snow, darkened like smudged ink. His hands were buried in his pockets, and his cane was thrust through his belt loop, where it just showed beneath a ragged pea coat as blue as his lips. "Some weather we'se having, aint it?"  
  
I turned my face towards the sky, white and thick and spewing snowflakes like ashes. "Sure is. They say it'll get colder in the night."  
  
He chuckled. "Well, I'll have da maid t'row an extra quilt on me bed." The three boys at his side, muscle that even Spot knew he didn't need, snickered. "I need ta speak wid Jack. Tell him, will ya Mouth?"  
  
"Sure. Give me a moment to see if he's busy."  
  
Jack WAS busy, as it turns out. When I made it through the front door and to the empty dining room, I found the two of them as busy as I'd suspected they might be. Jack lay on the floor, his arms behind his head, smiling that milky way of a smile, and Sarah was perched on top of him, her skirts bunched up to her knees, her hands on his bare chest. The strap of her slip had fallen off her shoulder, and it slid towards her elbow as she leaned in for a kiss. I frowned.  
  
"You . . . uh, you busy, Jack?"  
  
I could see Jack's jaw clenched in annoyance from the doorway. "Nah, Davey, s'not like I'se in the middle of somethin'. Show yaself in, why don't ya?"  
  
Sarah rolled her eyes and slipped from around his waist, pulling her top back into place and adjusting her skirts. She looked mad, but hey, what did she expect from me? She was my sister, after all.  
  
"Sorry, Jack, but Spot's here."  
  
"Oh, is he? Why didn't he call before he come? He thinks I got all the time da world for da mighty Spot Conlon, do he?"  
  
"I dunno, Jack. But he's waiting outside."  
  
Jack rubbed at his breastbone in thought. "Did he bring anybody?"  
  
"Couple a guys. Useless muscle, really . . . probably for safe passage. Should I bring him in?"  
  
He climbed to his feet and stood, his trousers still hanging loosely around his hips. Behind him, Sarah, now nearly fully clothed, sighed and passed him his abandoned shirt, and he shrugged into it. "Yeah, show 'im into our office."  
  
I nodded, and with a last look at Sarah, turned back and shuffled across the floorboards, thin and drilled through by wormholes, like rotted Swiss cheese. The Complex was no great shakes, but it was good enough for the odd female affair or business meeting. Race claimed it wasn't bad for disposing of bodies either, or "dumping dead weight", as he called it. . . but I thought he was joking. Race is quite the joker, you see.  
  
By the time I'd summoned Spot, and Jack had pulled himself and his clothing together, the tension was so heavy it whispered. Part of the alliance said Spot didn't venture to Manhattan if he couldn't help it, and visa versa. The two of them chased neutral ground for their meetings; Bronx was happy to have them, because it meant currying favor with the two titans of our world. You see how everything came back to Jack and Spot in the end?  
  
So the fact that Brooklyn had come to the Complex was large. And you could see it in Spot's face as he and his goons settled themselves around the table, in the vacant kitchen that still stunk of baked rice and ashes from the squat back coal stoves. Jack stood in the background, arms crossed so that his muscles stood thick as wires beneath tanned skin. Jack never sat down at his own meetings.  
  
"Respect, Jacky-boy." Spot spoke first, inhaling a cigarette Jack had handed him. "Respect, and money. I need 'em both to do me job, and I loose 'em both every time one a me boys washes up in da Brooklyn River wid cement shoes on 'is feet."  
  
Washes up in the Brooklyn River? Maybe Race wasn't too far off . . .  
  
"It wasn't me, Spotty."  
  
"Relax, Jack. No one said it was. You'se too smart for dat, and I trust Davey here ta keep you outta trouble. Manhattan neva even crossed me mind." A pause hung in the air, with Jack waiting on Spot's words, and Spot puffing his cigarette to buy himself the time to find his words, and me, watching from the doorway all the while. "I t'ink it was Wrench's boys."  
  
"Wrench? What makes you think that?" I piped up from my spot on the edge of it all. Wrench was a dope fiend. You know, a drug peddler. A coke pusher. He and his boys didn't work out of any boroughs or townships; they roamed the whole of New York. Sometimes they sold their stuff to newsboys, and sometimes they sold through them. If any of Spot's boys had turned up dead because of Wrench, I guessed it was because they'd gotten in his way.  
  
Spot's eyes lowered to the tabletop, which was odd, because Spot NEVER looked away first. He never flinched; the guy was made of the original Brooklyn Steel. "It was Dizzy. . . da one that washed up. Good kid, but he aint the cleanest son of a bitch on da streets. I come across him a couple times with a needle in 'is arm. Beat 'im upside the head wid me cane the last time, but I guess it didn't do no good. Now Dizzy's kicked it, and I'm thinkin' he got hisself into the business. Kid never had money, but 'e always had stuff."  
  
"So you'se thinkin' it was payment." Jack stroked his chest absentmindedly, rubbing the spot where Sarah had stroked only minutes ago. I don't think he noticed, but I did, and it bothered me more than Spot's story; that was for sure.  
  
"S'not what I t'ink, it's what I knows. If anyone's done 'im in, it's Wrench's boys. And I hear they's in Manhattan now a days."  
  
"You wanna come in to my borough and take care of it?" Jack tensed.  
  
"Jacky-boy, you owe me a favah, or did you fahget? 'Member da strike? Don't nothin' come for free, Jacky-boy. I scratched your back, now you can scratch mine. Get ya boys together, cause I know some a them do their own business wid Wrench. What's da one. . . got hisself a pretty face, always frownin'. . . Skittery, aint it?"  
  
"I can ask him, but Wrench's custamers don't always know where 'e is."  
  
Spot kicked his chair away and stood, and even though he wasn't nearly Jack's size, his glare was hard enough to make you forget that fact.  
  
"Find out, Jacky. I'm askin' youse ta find out, and I'm askin' youse ta look the other way when I send him a message a' me own. You gonna do that for me?"  
  
"Jack. . ." It took all my heart to speak up just then, in the face of Spot's wrath, but I had a job to do. This was what Jack expected of me, after all. "Jack, we don't need a body in Manhattan."  
  
"He's gotta pay, Mouth." Brooklyn spat, but Jack was listening now, his eyes clouded in thought.  
  
"And he can pay, but not in our borough. . . not in Jack's borough, I mean. We can talk to Skittery. We can find out where Wrench is and run him out. Jack can make sure no one buys from him. Wash him up in the gutters. Without business to do. . ."  
  
"Davey, so long as he's here, someone'll buy from him, no matter what I says. I don't want a body in me territory any more den you do, but I don't want me own newsies dead, neither. Dere aint nothin' else to do."  
  
"Sure there is!" I stepped into the kitchen then, ignoring Spot's thugs as they bristled from the tabletop, and flung my hands about as I spoke. Jack had power, so much power, and there HAD to be a better way for him to use it. Couldn't he see that? A battle with Wrench would be bad for business, and bad for me. Bad for all of us. It was too much risk. Why didn't Jack see? "There's plenty else to do, and you wouldn't even have to get dirty, Jack!"  
  
"What'll it be, Jacky-boy? You gonna listen to Mouth, here, or you gonna be smart and get rid a' dis bum before one a your newsies buys it like me boy Dizzy did?"  
  
Slowly, so very slowly, my friend nodded, spit into his palm, and avoiding my eyes, shook from across the table with Spot. "I'm ya man, Spotty."  
  
And that was the beginning of Jack's end.  
  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
  
Well now. . . another chapter done. Who'd have thunk it? I know, it's melodramatic and criminally cheesy, but to tell you the truth. . . it's so much fun *evil snickering ensues* I've always wanted to do one of these political gang war type dramas, but I couldn't push past the cliché-ness of it. Now I have, and I'm having sooooo much fun!  
  
So. . . what do you folks think? Care to let me know in a REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW? *cough* ahem. Please review. 


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